" You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a lifetime of conversation." Plato

Being Autenthentic. My Goodness, how difficult that is

To lead an organization and people does not mean to command and force, but to motivate and inspirethe personnel to achive results. You could only do that through conversation, and it is anly real, when authentic. To be authentic is often mistaken with being positive, emotional, and even natueally aggresive. Yet authentic means to be yourself, and to have the internal freedom to say things as you feel them, in such a way as to respect yourself and others sincerely. Today everyone longs for authenticity.
The conversation where we wxpress our real sleves seems the most natural thing in the world, doesn’t it? However do you remember the last time when you have deal with partner, a customer? Have you felt your palms sweating, your voice breaking, your knees trembling, and your heart beating wildly ? The truth is that there is no man who does not deel uneasy conversing, though to different degrees, his experience notwithstanding. It takes practice!
The authentic conversation, together with setting of goals and care for ourselves, turns out to be one of the greatest challenges for the human mind. Why? Lovi is the culprit. Or rather the need for love. There is no man who does not want to be heard, understood, and loved. No matter how we show it, we are very tender inside, even fragile. Sometimes one unsuccessful attempt at expressing our real self is enough to make us hide behind the mask of importance, aggression, or severity, and so hinders us from displaying our full potential.
No matter how much we try to escape from uneasy situation in dealing with people, eventually, under the chief’s pressure, the circumstances, or deadline we have to force them. Meanwhile we have accumulated such tension and stress to drive the next time to hide in the wordrobe together with the skeletons of our biggest fears-that we will look silly, that we will be denied and rejected.
I offer you three possible simple steps that can help each of us to examine, achive and experience the barrier in ourselves, the possibilities outside it, and the desired result. The goal is to change your attitude to the problem. It is important NOT to answer the questions below as a test but to move into the particular situation, as if you experience it, and to feel all its challenges, Take your time and make yourself comfortable in order to look into yourself undisturbed. Here are three steps:1. Ask yourself: “What is the result that I want to achive, where and when?
The first step is to give your goal a clear and positive definition- not what you do not want, but what you do want. It is crucial here to allow yourself to move slowly into the particular situatio as if you live here already and are now where you were dreaming you would be. Let your imagination run free. Ask yourself the following questions: What is my idea of the desired result or the ideal situation?What would be my tone of my voice? What are my gestures when I am confident and natural? What do I say to the person in front of me, or to the audience?2. Fix you eyes on your internal barrier.
Man has to see, examine and realize something, in order to manage it. This is the situation with our personal brute facts – our internal barriers. The goal of the second steps is to examine what drives yoi to put on the breaks. The questions here are: “How would I feel if I am now in challenging situation? Do I have any physical sensations in my body? How do I see, feel the situation and the people whom I have dealings with? How do I imagine myself in conversation with other people? How do I talk? What is the power of my voice? Is there aything that I can think or say? What is the level of challenge for me on a scale from 0 to 5?3. Finding resources
The goal here is to seek resources that will support you. Resources are like small treasure-houses in our consciousness, abounding in positive experience and being treasures, are hidden at the dar end of the world. Recall some experience where you had express yourself freely, without limitation, and where you felt good. If youcannot reacall that sort of thing, leave it open and while you are inder the shower, the tape will start. Or reacall some person whose authentic conversation fills you with admiration. Try to recall how exactly you felt when you were yourself. Remember what do you feel – easiness, joy, freedom…Now turn back again to the challenging situation, where all your barries are lifted up, but add the emotion you had just felt, and look at the situation from this resource: what is changing in your action, speach, senses? Ask yourself:cHow do I begin to express myself? How do the tone of my voice and body posture change? What do I say myself? Asif are making a collage in your imagination and as in a movie you observe what is happening, without predetermining the end of the “movie”or striving dor a partiular result. Remember that Leonardo daVinci found his great discoveries only through observation.A zen piece of wisdom says that man can be the “sky that embraces the clouds”, you can be greater than your biggest fears, and you can be in contact with them. Jim Collins, the famous American business consultant on leadership calls this simultaneous contact with the brute facts of reality and with the longed for result, and places it among the key characteristics of the top – level leadership.
These three steps are absolutely enough for us to plant the seed of a new approach to the problem situation. The study of the mental reactions of sportsmen show that those who train their imagination for a week, visualizing themselves achieving better results, prove better in a real situation than those who have trained strenuously in the stadium.
After you pass these steps, you may undertake some big leaps to the advanced stage. They depend entirely on the extent to which this new experience has taken root in you, and on the extent to which you feel stable and ready for new personal records, and you can add public speech techniques, presentation skills, etc., only after building of this platform, otherwise the will toss about like a ship in a raging see.Finally – here are two jokers that will help you to improve: – Give yourself rewards for small successes. – Take your time- it is said that the way to your own heart is the longest journey with the shortest distance. And do not forget to embarace the clouds!